


It’s Peaceful Here

by protego



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Referenced Dismemberment, Referenced murder, burial
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-30 20:20:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11470956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protego/pseuds/protego
Summary: “‘This is a nice spot, isn’t it?’ Ed asks her as he marks out the parameters for her grave.”A short piece about Kristen Kringle’s burial.





	It’s Peaceful Here

He buries the love of his life in a forest on the edge of the city, in the dappled mid-afternoon sunlight. It’s as proper a burial as circumstances allow.

The area is secluded and silent, and Ed glances around one last time before picking up his shovel from where he propped it against a nearby tree. He avoids looking at the large trunk, which contains Miss Kringle, in pieces, wrapped in black bin bags. This is a very pretty spot. They’re surrounded by yarrow flowers, and oak trees. It’s peaceful here.

Miss Kringle would like this place, Ed decides as he stabs the shovel into the ground. The soil is hard, because it’s the middle of November, and the air is bitterly cold. He marks out a straight line with the edge of the shovel. The hole will be perfectly rectangular, and neat, as if it was dug in a cemetery. She deserves perfection.

“This is a nice spot, isn’t it?” Ed asks her as he draws out the parameters for her grave. He measured the trunk, so he knows how wide and how long to make the hole, so the trunk will fit perfectly. “Nice and secluded. So nobody’ll disturb you.”

The rectangle is marked out now, and he doesn’t pause before digging into the earth. He’s not worried about being caught – no one comes this far off the path – but he wants to get this over with, because it’s very physically demanding. Of course, it’s not as tiring or violent as dismembering her. That took hours, and he had to keep pausing to go to the bathroom and throw up. But this is still hard work, and he wants to get it finished.

Ed presses all his weight onto the shovel, grunting with effort, and pierces the earth, digging out a large chunk of solid soil. He tosses it to the side, and immediately continues digging, hardly allowing himself a moment to pause. The quicker the hole is made, the better.

“It should snow soon, Miss Kringle,” he says, conversationally, as he digs. “But I think we have a few weeks before then. I’ll come and visit you when it snows. I would put a wreath down, for Christmas, but that might look suspicious.” He pauses to dig into a particularly hard piece of soil, gritting his teeth with effort.

It’s a shame that he won’t be able to mark her final resting place. If he could, he would give her a headstone, or at least a bunch of flowers, but the risk is too great. This area of the woods isn’t visited often, but the chance of someone coming across any sort of marker – even something as inconspicuous as a pile of rocks – is too dangerous. There can’t be any sign that someone is buried here. Miss Kringle’s grave must be anonymous.

Ed silently digs for a while. The trunk is 2 feet deep, so he has to dig a 3 foot hole, in order for it to fit. After about fifteen minutes of digging, he says, “I’m sorry I have to leave you here, but I’ll come and see you as often as I can.”

He imagines her smiling in that warm way that he used to. He imagines her saying that she understands. Miss Kringle would know that he has no choice. And that thought makes him feel a little better, and makes him dig faster. He’s standing in a shallow grave now, digging around himself, and then moving to make the space he was standing in as deep as the rest. It’s tiresome work, and his muscles ache, but he doesn’t stop.

It’s impossible to tell how much time passes. Ed gets into a rhythm, after a while, and mindlessly tosses soil out of the hole, into a growing pile of earth beside it. He doesn’t spare a glance for the trunk, or talk to Miss Kringle again. Instead, he focuses on the task at hand until the hole is approximately 3 feet deep. Then, slightly out of breath, he climbs out of the grave.

It’s perfectly straight and rectangular. He’s quite proud of himself, and he smiles and looks at the trunk.

“You’ll be comfortable here, Miss Kringle,” he says, pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. “But, before that, I thought we could do something nice. I just have to fetch something from my car.”

There’s no chance of someone walking past now, he thinks. He’s managed to dig the hole without being disturbed, so there’s nothing to worry about if he leaves her unattended for a few minutes while he goes back to his car to get the picnic hamper. He wants one last meal with the woman he loves before he has to say goodbye to her forever. It will be a pleasant send-off. He’d always wanted to take Miss Kringle out for a picnic.

So, with a polite nod to the trunk, Ed turns away from the open grave and heads back to his car, whistling to himself.


End file.
